How To Check If A Package Is Installed Or Not In Ubuntu

If you are using Ubuntu or Debian and other Linux distribution that are use dpkg or apt-get commands to install, remove or update packages, you probably have some problems when you don’t remember a package is installed or not on your system. Don’t worry if you don’t remember it, dpkg have a feature to check a package is installed or not.

So in this quick tutorial I will show you How To Check If A Package Is Installed Or Not In Ubuntu, lets get started.

Check a Package is installed or not

To check a particular package is installed or not is simple, just by using this command below :

$ dpkg -s package_name

$ dpkg -s leafad

As you can see on the screenshot above, the leafpad package is installed.

Check a Package with a decent output

You can check a package with dpkg-query, but with dpkg-query will display the output with a decent output. To use this command just type this :

$ dpkg-query -l package_name

$ dpkg-query -l leafpad

If you see the screenshot, the output is simpler than the dpkg -s command above.

List all installed package in your system

You also can list all installed packages in your system by enter the following command :

$ dpkg --get-selections

$ dpkg –get-selections

The output just like on the screenshot above is very long depending to the number of packages you have installed,

Filter package result with grep

To make the above result much simpler, you can use a filter command grep, with grep it will only show the exact package you need.For example if i want to see what winepackages that already installed on my system. So here is the command :

$ dpkg --get-selection | grep wine

$ dpkg –get-selections | grep wine

Just like what you see on the screenshot, it will only show package that contains “wine” on it.

That is all for my quick tutorial, I hope this tutorial help you to find your installed package on your system. Every comments are very welcome, just leave it on the comment box. Thank you !